The PCUSA: Sigh! A friend of mine, Bill Sussman, who knows me to be a Presbyterian, brought to my attention the resolution passed at the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA, condemning Israel. My friend is the president of his Reformed congregation, and his Anti-Defamation League contacts had sent out a massive email about the action. As he has been needling me about my Christianity since we were in college and inviting me to come over to Moses' side, and as I have been trying to convert him for at least as long, I sent him a long email explaining how the General Assembly relates to the people in the pews (it doesn't). I also told him about the schism inside the denomination between the moderates and evangelicals on the one hand and, on the other, the people who support abortion, "gay rights", government control of everything important, people who believe that the story of Jesus was invented by "the early church", and who have fashioned a god in their own image, a god whom they reinvent as often as they do themselves. (Other than that, these are really great people.) My friend, Bill, conceded that there are such people on the Reformed side of Judaism.

There is a good article about what the PCUSA General Assembly did, critical of it but intelligently so, on the Christianity Today website here. It was written by a rabbi.

Jews like Bill and Christians like me have much more in common than the people on the other side of the divide in the PCUSA. The unfortunate thing is that the bureacracy of our denomination has so much control over the organization's organs on communication. On the other hand, the people in the pews have control over the purse strings, and at many churches in our denomination, including my church, we send not a penny to the national organization of the denomination that supports the bureaucracy.